Monday, June 04, 2007

Belgian beer tour

Just had a brief trip to Louvain-La-Neuve in Belgium, combining this workshop (on millennial-scale paleoclimate data assimilation, organised by Hugues Goosse and Martin Widmann) with a visit to Michel Crucifix who is also at the same institute. The trip ended up being a bit briefer than originally planned, partly because I only discovered relatively late that Monday was a holiday, so I spent that day walking off my jetlag on the streets of Brussels looking at the outsides of shut buildings:

There was a lot of interesting discussion, but also quite a lot of talking at cross purposes - the area is young enough that there isn't much established practice yet. I'm sure that everyone left better informed than they came, which is one of the main points of such meetings, and there was also substantial agreement about the way forward (or rather, a range of constructive ways forward). I missed the end of the final discussion session due to some incompetence over my travel arrangements (largely my own, compounded by that of the staff at the train station). So I wait with interest to see the official statement of conclusions.

I'm not admitting how many I had of each, but I plan on detoxing with green tea and steamed rice for the next several days :-) I failed to find any lambic, but gueuze is apparently a more drinkable version and that was quite...interesting...enough. I've tasted enough bad home-brew that I can't really see why anyone would deliberately make it: on the other hand, I do eat rotten soya beans and mouldy cheese quite happily, so I can't be too sarcastic. In fact since I was flying from Paris, I swapped some spare Euros for mouldy cheese at the airport on the way home, only realising after walking past the sniffer dogs at Japanese customs that this might not have been the most sensible course of action!

I was just about to speak up for La Mort Subite myself -- only to find the idea gazumped. Next time do try it -- Faro, the unblended draft lambic, is a drink unlike any other. That said, any day that includes a Westmalle Tripel is gearing up to be a day well spent. One day I must go to the brewery to try the Extra.

If I'd realised quite how spectacular the beer was going to be (especially coming from Japan) before I visited, I would have made more of an effort to plan a tasting strategy. But despite appearances, it was actually a work trip...